Reader of The Week: Roberto

Calling Roberto a "reader" seems rather stingy, when so often he has been a ghost-writer, fact checker, and researcher for this blog as well. Without his contribution I can say with certainty Behooving Moving would not be the world’s most informative bicycle blog. I can say that with certainty. Za-Bear admiring Roberto’s sprawling collection of 8 running bikes, and parts to build 80 more.

True to his Milanese ancestry, Roberto is a foodie and barrister extraordinaire. Yet beneath the stored energy consumed for the pure joy of eating, is a corporeal being with Olympiad scores for muscle tone, bone density, and peak oxygen conversion rates. He is also a much in demand man about town. To ensure his presence at our annual Newcastle Gentleman’s Bike Polo function, we have learned to coordinate our celebration with those of 3 Mountain Bike clubs, The Liberal and Labour Party, The Newcastle Club, The Kiwanis, drinking buddies from every realm, The Freemasons, The Rosicrucians, The In-Esperanto-Please Toastmaster’s club, and a dozen or so other community organizations who all vie for Roberto’s attention at that time of year.

There is a gentile, wind-in-the-willows type calm in the way Roberto approaches Ebay, online bike-bits reviews and pdf catalogs, and we can imagine him sitting at his father’s feet by a fire, admiring him reading piles of Haynes manuals for pleasure, the way his father before him read Italian books about how to grow cheese. On behalf of 52 annual working bee crews, The Lions, Knights Templar, and our little gang of bike nuts, thank you Roberto!